Welcome to The Best of Book Riot, our daily round-up of what’s on offer across our site, newsletters, podcasts, and social channels. Today, we look back at the most popular stuff we did this week.
This is a mix of September and October releases, and I’m going to be honest with you, I’m not sure why the Indie Next List is organized this way. Maybe the publication dates shifted since they were nominated, or maybe indie booksellers are just mysterious that way.
A chill in the air? Check. Pumpkin spice-flavored everything hitting the shelves? Check. Pop-up Halloween stores appearing overnight? Check. It’s official: it’s the season of the witch! Today’s recommendations have hex appeal and feature witches who can work all kinds of spells (or maybe not), but can’t stop themselves from falling in love. Oh-oh-oh, it’s magic!
Book Riot Exhorts You to Vote and Endorses Kamala Harris for President
I can say it no better than our own Sharifah Williams does in our endorsement of Kamala Harris:
We find ourselves, again, approaching an election season where it is imperative to lend our voices to the call for every American to vote and be heard. The last time we published a political endorsement, we had not yet witnessed the January 6th attack on the Capitol, which resulted in at least seven deaths and more than 150 injuries in connection with the insurrection as well as a shaken nation. Roe had yet to be overturned, placing politicians between doctors and patients and giving states often catastrophic power over the reproductive health and family planning decisions of many. Book bans and censorship had yet to reach a critical point, with political groups standing in front of parents, librarians, and educators, telling them what their children and students can and cannot read. Americans who have witnessed their country’s descent into a regressive age demand freedom and change.
Publishing is amping up for the gift season, so there are dozens of books coming out every week! Alas, I can’t put them all on this list, but I grabbed a fresh 20 for you (don’t get used to it, but it was hard to narrow down this month)! There are traditionally published books and independently published ones; debuts and sequels. You want rom-coms? We got ‘em. You want some darkness? Of course! We’re a little light on romantasy this month, partly because I can’t tell which ones are definitely Capital R Romances with happy endings. But! Tis the season—for some magic and witchcraft!
These YA books range from contemporary to romance to fantasy and even a vampire story. Some of them take their revenge and the threat of the ex seriously, while others are treated more as a zany plot point or background to the real action. They all came out within the last five years, with one publishing later this year.
Gothic horror is a genre that is often more unsettling than outright terrifying. The horror builds slowly and the setting, often a crumbling castle or ruined building, is a character in and of itself. Characters can be isolated in these settings or societally—struggling with their place, and their safety—alone. Gothic horror digs into the internal struggles of characters, too, and explores things like morality, social standing, and loss. Some of the books in this genre dabble with supernatural elements or the suggestion of them, adding to the tension of the narrative.
Between our newsletters, podcasts, and the site, Book Riot recommends hundreds of books every month, but which of those recommendations are sticking? We don’t have perfect data on that, but we do have a proxy: the books you all clicked on the most. It’s hard for us to know whether a book gets clicked on because you wanted to buy it right then and there or because you just wanted to learn more about it. Either way, it’s an interesting thing to track, especially because it doesn’t neatly map onto our most popular posts.
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